Health Care as a Basic Human Right
Presented by the Massachusetts Medical Society’s Officers and the Committee on Ethics, Grievances, and Professional Standards, the Ethics Forum alerts physicians to the ethical implications of issues that arise in the practice of medicine and offers information on issues at the intersection of ethics, medicine, and professionalism. This Ethics Forum explores domestic and international attitudes on health care as a basic human right, focusing on the implications of recognizing health care as a human right for the US health care system.
Learning Objectives
- Define basic human rights
- Contrast the concept of health care as a right vs. privilege
- Discuss international and domestic perceptions of health care as a human right
- Describe the implications of recognizing health care as a human right in the United States
Faculty
Jennifer Prah Ruger, PhD, MSc, MSL, MA, is a leading scholar of global and domestic health policy and public health. She conducts theoretical and empirical studies of health equity to address global and national health inequities with a focus on the most impoverished and vulnerable populations worldwide, especially women and children. Dr. Prah Ruger draws on her training in political economy, health policy, international relations, comparative social research and law to cross disciplines and reexamine the principles and values that underlie health policy and public health and apply these principles empirically. She created the health capability paradigm, challenging existing approaches and illuminating optimal health policies and she has developed an empirical approach to evaluate public health programs and health policies as they measure up to that paradigm. Dr. Prah Ruger’s scholarship has critically scrutinized the existing global health architecture in order to identify more effective global health policy responses linking public policy and law to global health theory at the global and national levels. Dr. Prah Ruger studies health policy and public health problems such as the equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform and the social determinants of health. Her scholarship includes areas such as global health justice; global health governance; health and social justice; and shared health governance. Her research is conducted internationally and nationally, including work in Ghana, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Morocco, South Korea, South Africa, the United States and Vietnam.
Dr. Prah Ruger has authored over 125 publications and is internationally recognized for her leadership and work, which has been cited by the United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organization and United States Government. She has been Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator on awards from the National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Center, Hewlett Foundation, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her forthcoming book, Global Health Justice and Governance (OUP, in press), which advances a theory of global health justice called provincial globalism. She received a Greenwall Faculty Scholar Award in Bioethics and a Donaghue Investigator Award in ethics and economics of health disparities.
Dr. Prah Ruger was a member of the Institute of Medicine’s Board on Global Health; the Ethics Subcommittee of the Advisory Committee to the Director at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Institute of Medicine’s Committee to Evaluate The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She has served on several international and national advisory and expert review committees, including for the World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, Fulbright Program, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and institutions in East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. She is the past Chair and Program Chair of the Ethics Special Primary Interest Group (SPIG) of the American Public Health Association (APHA). She was previously the Co-Director of the Yale-World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion, Policy and Research. She served previously at the World Bank as health economist and speechwriter to president James D. Wolfensohn and on the health and development satellite secretariat of WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland’s Transition Team. In 2014, she was elected as a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Dr. Prah Ruger received a bachelor’s degree in the honors program in political economy from the University of California-Berkeley, master’s degrees from Oxford University, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Yale University, a doctoral degree from Harvard University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard’s Center for Population and Development.
Audrey R. Chapman, PhD holds the Healey Memorial Chair in Medical Ethics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and is a Professor of Community Medicine and Healthcare. She is the author, coauthor, or editor of sixteen books and more than 75 peer reviewed articles and reports on ethical and human rights issues related to health care access and affordability, genetics, human embryonic stem cell research, intellectual property, and clinical testing. Her most recent books are Global Health, Human Rights and the Challenges of Neoliberal Policies (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and Genetic Research on Addiction: Ethics, the Law, and Public Health (Cambridge University Press 2012). She has served on expert committees sponsored by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNESCO and worked with United Nations Special Rapporteurs for the right to health. She currently serves as the Chair of the University of Connecticut Stem Cell Research Oversight Committee and is a member of the Expert Genomics Panel for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, and the Maryland State Stem Cell Review Committee. Her current research interests include ethical and regulatory issues involved in translating pluripotent stem cell research into therapies; the requirements of universal health coverage from a human rights perspective; defining and delivering core health services consistent with human rights approaches, and approaches to achieving improved health coverage in poor and middle-income countries.
Carmel Shachar, JD, MPH, is the Executive Director of the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School. She is responsible for oversight of the Center’s sponsored research portfolio, event programming, fellowships, student engagement, development, and a range of other projects and collaborations. She is Co-Lead of the Center’s Involvement with the Regulatory Foundations, Ethics, and Law Program of Harvard Catalyst | The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, and Co-Editor of the Center’s collaborative health policy blog, Bill of Health.
Carmel’s scholarship focuses on law and health policy, in particular the regulation of access to care for vulnerable individuals, health care anti-discrimination law and policy, and the use of all-payer claims databases in health care research. Carmel is also a Lecturer at Law on Harvard Law School, where she co-teaches a course on “Health Care Rights in the Twenty-First Century.”
Carmel was previously a Clinical Instructor on Law at the Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation at Harvard Law School (CHLPI), where she helped lead CHLPI’s access to care and Affordable Care Act implementation work. During her time at CHLPI, Carmel focused on analyzing and translating health policy issues and opportunities for a broad range of audiences, including many federal and state-level health policy coalitions. She also coordinated and led a major multi-state initiative to document discriminatory benefit designs on the health insurance Marketplaces. Carmel previously practiced health care law at Ropes & Gray, LLP in Boston, Massachusetts. Carmel currently serves on the board of the Fishing Partnership Support Services as well as on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Boston University.
Carmel graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, where she was a student fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center, and the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
Course Fees
MMS Member Physicians: Free
MMS Resident/Student Member: Free
Nonmember Physicians: $40.00
Nonmember Resident/Student: $15.00
Allied Health Professionals: $20.00
Format: Video
CME Credit: 2.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™
Accreditation Statement
The Massachusetts Medical Society is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
AMA Credit Designation Statement
The Massachusetts Medical Society designates this enduring material for a maximum of 2.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
This activity meets the criteria for the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine for risk management study.
MOC Approval Statement
Through the American Board of Medical Specialties ("ABMS")
ongoing commitment to increase access to practice relevant Maintenance of
Certification ("MOC") Activities through the ABMS Continuing Certification
Directory , this activity has met the requirements as an MOC Part II
CME Activity (apply toward general CME requirement) for the following ABMS
Member Boards:
Allergy and Immunology
Anesthesiology
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Psychiatry & Neurology
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National Commission on Certification of Physicians Assistant (NCCPA)
Physician Assistants may claim a maximum of 2.00 Category 1 credits for completing this activity. NCCPA accepts AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™ from organizations accredited by ACCME or a recognized state medical society.
Exam/Assessment: Please respond
to the reflective statement at the end of the course to receive AMA PRA
Category 1 Credits.™
Activity Term
Original Released Date: March 14, 2019
Review Date: N/A
Termination Date: March 14, 2022
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